The Secret Page

by Al Turner

  Daniel didn’t answer at first, as he had drifted off into a fantasy. “Must’ve been rough,” he said.

  Carson punched his arm. “So whatever the plan is, it better be quick. Poppy’s here and he’ll be looking for us soon.”

  “Pops is here?” Daniel asked, his eyes widening.

  “That’s what I said. He reckons to take Tripp and me off somewhere safe. We’ll call that plan A. I kind of like plan B.”

  “What’s plan B?”

  “That’s where we go and discover a little Page family history.”

  “Oh, right,” said Daniel, the reality of what she was saying hitting him. “So we’re running from Pops?”

  “Yep, it’s called plan B.”

  “That’s not wise, girlfriend.”

  “I told you never to call me that. And it’s not supposed to be wise. We’re going to use your geekiness, my brother’s puzzle-solving skills, and my awesomeness at everything else to figure this crap out.”

  “I should run the other way now, but I’m somehow drawn to the idea.”

  “I do have that effect on you.”

  “Only problem is, I can’t get into that Mark guy’s phone. Without some clue to follow, we don’t have any breadcrumbs.”

  “I thought you were good.” Carson said with disappointment. “There has to be some other trail we can pick up.”

  “We can hope.”

  As Daniel spoke, he watched Tripp walk up, tap the code into the outside panel, and enter. He tossed an old green duffel bag on the couch next to Carson’s backpack. “Did you get it?” Tripp asked.

  “The phone? It may take more time, if it’s even possible,” Daniel said.

  “We don’t have time,” Tripp replied.

  “Then we might as well get going,” Carson said as she picked up her pack and headed for the front door.

  Tripp grabbed her arm. “Not that way,” he said and pointed to the back of the office.

  “There’s a back door in this place?” She had been in the office many times and was unaware of a rear exit. Her own apartment had only one way in and out.

  “Technically, there is a back door,” said Daniel, “but it’s been sealed up for years. We wouldn’t want to use the front or back anyway, not if Pops is coming.”

  “So that leaves what?” Carson asked, confused.

  “Another route.” Tripp walked over to his desk and opened the top drawer. He had a curious look on his face, as if something seemed out of place. “Daniel, did you take the mad money?”

  “Not from your desk. I grabbed it from behind the picture.”

  Tripp glanced up at the framed picture above Daniel’s desk, the scaled-down reproduction movie poster of Casablanca. “Right—it’s out of place.” Daniel knew his own presence was always obvious from the chaos he left behind. Whoever had sifted through this desk drawer, however, had been careful to remove the money and leave everything else in its place. “Who’s been in my desk?” asked Tripp.

  “I was, but I went through the phone drawer.” Daniel produced the two phones he had secured from Tripp’s desk, tossing one to Carson and the other to her puzzled brother.

  “Oh good, a phone!” exclaimed Carson. “What the hell is mad money?”

  “It’s a term Pops told us about. You hide money for a rainy day,” said Tripp.

  “Poppy used to hide money?” Carson snorted with laughter. “Probably from our crazy grandma.”

  “Really, guys, somebody went through my desk and liberated the mad money in it.”

  “Your dad drops by from time to time. Maybe he took out a loan. Even preachers need a drink every now and then,” said Daniel.

  “With the crap he’s put up with lately, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Carson said.

  “I assume you two are jesting,” Tripp said. “Dad does own a bar—not to mention he has more money than I do.”

  “Our parents have money?” Carson asked.

  “Seriously, Carson?” Tripp said. “A nice home on a canal, a bar, a boat, the building we work and live in . . . shall I go on?”

  “I guess I figured Poppy bought all that for them. He’s generous, while Mother’s father would never part with any of his money.”

  Tripp looked irked by his sister’s comments regarding their other grandfather but said nothing. He continued the search through his desk. “Hundreds of dollars are missing.”

  Daniel knew that once Tripp became obsessed with something, he’d never let it go. He was hesitant to mention the hidden camera in front of Carson, since she’d want to know how long it had been there. She had gotten drunk one night and decided it was closer to change her clothes in their office rather than climb the stairs to her apartment.

  Time being of the essence, Daniel decided it was worth the risk of Carson’s wrath in order to get Tripp moving again. “Let’s just check the video footage, Tripp.”

  Tripp’s head popped up. “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?” He promptly fired up his computer while the others gathered around the monitor as he searched through the approximate timeframe of footage. It took only a moment to find what he was looking for.

  “It was Dad,” Carson said as the image of Jack went straight for Tripp’s desk and secured the money. “He must have came straight over here when he left the house earlier.”

  “I guess Dad didn’t have time to run to an ATM,” Tripp said. “I wonder what he needed it for at this time of night?”

  “A vacation from mother,” Carson said.

  “Okay, mystery solved. We need to go,” said Daniel, noticing someone through the glass coming their way.

  Carson punched Daniel as he walked by her to grab his gear. “Anything else I need to know?”

  Daniel knew better than to play dumb. “Nope,” he said as he walked toward the back of the office.

  Carson and Tripp grabbed their stuff and were right behind him. As they reached the back door, sealed shut, they stopped.

  “Now what?” Carson asked.

  “Now we take the low road,” said Daniel as he lifted a panel on the wall to their right.

  It slid upward with the sound of wood on wood. Beyond it was little more than a crawl space. Even Carson had to squeeze into the passageway as she toted her backpack. Tripp was the last one through and closed the hidden panel behind them. As they filed through, their eyes adjusted to the dim light from around a bend in the passage.

  “What the hell is this doing here?” Carson asked.

  “Don’t know,” said Daniel as he led onward. “Maybe it was a passage to an old speakeasy?”

  Tripp groaned from behind him. “We’ve had this conversation, Daniel. Prohibition ended long before this building was constructed.”

  “I forgot we had that conversation.”

  As they made a sharp turn into a wider corridor, Carson suddenly stopped and looked down. While Daniel continued his journey toward a probable dead end, she stomped a few times, drawing him back to the spot. Something was bothering her about the floor. She dropped to her hands and knees and examined it further. “The floor is concrete, except for this one spot.”

  Tripp watched to see what she would do. Enclosed spaces bothered him, however, so soon he sped things along. “I believe you’ll find what you’re looking for to your left.”

  As Carson ran her hand along the baseboard, she found a piece of metal that moved. She lifted up on it and found it was some sort of handle. The sound of a latch giving way could be heard, but nothing happened.

  “You’ll have to move off the door,” said Tripp.

  “There’s a door here?” Carson asked. “What’s on the other side?”

  “More darkness.”

  “You mean you haven’t explored it?”

  Tripp paused, as if thinking of what would sound like a good reason to his sister. With resignation, he said, “The passageway we’re in is stuffy enough as it is. I never gathered enough curiosity, or courage, to travel deeper into the abyss.”

  “That’s right�
�you hate being in stuffy places.”

  “It’s called claustrophobia,” Tripp said. “More accurately, I have an irrational fear of confined spaces.”

  “And I’m afraid of spiders,” said Daniel. “There are plenty of spiderwebs to greet anyone who wants to go in. We did once try to send a small camera drone down there.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Not much. It crashed, and neither of us really wanted to retrieve it.”

  “You’re both sissies,” Carson said as she moved, found the hidden latch again, and pulled. To her delight, about four feet of floor popped up like the hood of a car. The metal doorway even had hydraulics to keep it propped open. “We must go exploring.”

  “No way,” said Daniel, shining his phone’s flashlight into the opening. The light exposed a dirty concrete path that sloped downward gradually like a ramp, in the direction they had walked from, and disappeared into the unknown. The light exposed glistening white silk threads that stretched across their path. Daniel shuddered. “Too many webs for me.”

  “A bit too stuffy for my taste,” added Tripp.

  Carson tossed her pack into the darkness and let it roll down the ramp. She followed it down the walkway and lit her path with her phone’s light, clearing the webs in front of her. The silk threads she touched were odd. As she brushed them, they fell and lay on one side of the wall or the other, the pattern a bit too uniform for natural webs. As she moved on, suddenly no webs blocked her path. They were fake webs.

  Reluctantly, both Daniel and Tripp followed her. Their descent was equivalent to about a floor before it leveled off, and they found themselves in an underground basement where they could stand up and walk normally. Tripp located a hanging cord and pulled it, switching on a dim light above them. The room was mostly empty, save for some boxes in the corner and pipes that ran along the walls. What caught their attention was another door in the opposite corner. It was metal and secured with a keypad.

  “I can’t believe you guys were such little bitches that you missed finding this!” Carson exclaimed. The excitement of the discovery appeared to overwhelm her senses. “What’s beyond this door?”

  “The little bitches wouldn’t know,” said Daniel with a laugh.

  “You do realize Pops will make his way into our office—if he hasn’t already—locate the hidden passage, and find us down here, right?” Tripp said. reminding them there was little time for exploration.

  “Did you close the hidden floor entry we came through?” Carson asked.

  “No, I didn’t. The thought of sealing ourselves into this tomb wasn’t appealing.”

  Carson rolled her eyes. “Daniel, you work on the lock of that door,” she said and pointed at it with her light. “I’ll go back and shut us in. It might buy us some time to explore this place.”

  “I’m on it,” Daniel said enthusiastically as he examined the keypad to the steel door.

  ***

  Tripp wasn’t as enthused as Daniel and shined his own light on Carson. “What about finding the truth?”

  “Hello,” she said and shielded her eyes. “Who owns this building? Who do you suppose used these secret passages?”

  “I believe our great-grandfather Roy must have. I heard Pops tell stories of how he built a secret facility to run his illegal gambling operations.” He paused. “Hmm, the technology on the door didn’t exist at that time, though. Pops, maybe?”

  “Even I can tell this place has been used since Poppy signed the building over to Dad years ago.”

  He seemed to acknowledge she was right. With all the talk about going off and finding a breadcrumb trail, they may have found one right under their noses. “I’ll check those boxes in the corner while Daniel works on the lock,” said Tripp.

  “Great,” said Carson. She stopped to closely inspect the walls in the room. “What are those things over there?”

  Tripp’s eyes traced where she pointed. “Those would be well points,” he said matter-of-factly. “They’re small pumps used to keep the water table lower than this room, so it doesn’t flood.”

  “Is that because we’re underground?”

  “Yes, but not that far underground. This part of Viridian Square was built on a hill, a man-made one, it seems. I’d estimate that the upper two feet of that wall are above street level.”

  “Oh,” Carson said and remembered she needed to go cover their tracks. She went back up the ramp and found a dangling chain that would allow her to pull the hidden panel shut. But before she did, a thought crossed her mind.

  She exited and proceeded down the narrow hall to the apparent dead end. Daniel had started going that way for a reason, Carson thought. She ran her hands across the wooden wall, and it easily slid to reveal a brick enclosure with a metal door.

  A light from the other side crept through the edges of the old door. She opened it and learned it only had a knob on the inside; it was used strictly as an exit.

  The light turned out to be from a streetlamp on the road behind the square. Beyond the road was a small outside sitting area before the private parking for residents who lived on the canal just beyond it.

  Carson realized she was at the far end of the building. She heard distant voices. They could be from anyone gathering on the square for a Saturday night, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She ducked back in and left the door cracked open to make it appear they had exited the building.

  Snickering like a mischievous child, she headed back to finish covering their tracks. That should throw Poppy off, she thought.

  Carson found Tripp and Daniel at the locked door where she had left them, hovering around it as if some mystical force protected it. They failed to acknowledge her return as they discussed whether that particular model required a four- or eight-digit key code. On the surface, their chatter sounded like English but was a strange dialect to Carson’s ears. They finally concluded it could be anything between four and eight digits.

  “The door is secure,” she said, then added, “the secret one.”

  “That took a while,” Tripp said, not looking up from the phone he had decided to refer to. He had pulled up a map and was studying it. A puzzled look formed on his face. “I seriously doubt he used the zip code of his hometown.”

  “It was just a thought,” Daniel said defensively. “Maybe it’s the zip code of where your parents first met.”

  “Maybe it’s not a zip code at all, geniuses,” Carson said. “For all the brains you two supposedly have, you tend to miss the obvious. Did you try Mom’s birthday?”

  “We haven’t tried anything yet,” Daniel said. “We’re still discussing this as a committee.”

  Carson started to push her way through to try something, but Tripp stopped her. He walked up to the panel and studied it a bit longer, then reached into a fanny pack hidden below his untucked shirt. He produced a short cylindrical jar half full of a fine gray powder. He then pulled out a small carbon fiber brush.

  “What’s that?” Carson asked.

  “I’ll assume you want to know what it’s used for, not what it consists of.”

  “Try not to be a smart-ass.”

  “It’s a fingerprint kit,” Tripp said as he unscrewed the lid and dabbed the brush into the jar. Carefully, he dusted the keypad while Daniel held some light on the spot. “One, two, and nine are the prevalent button strikes,” he said.

  “Which tells us what?” Carson asked.

  Tripp thought for a moment. “Assuming it’s a four-digit year—and not a month, day, and year combination—I would suggest 1992.”

  “Which just happens to be the year we were born,” Carson added.

  “Let’s try it,” Daniel said, punching in the code. At first nothing happened. He stared at the doorknob, as if hoping he hadn’t jumped the gun. Silently, a square panel next to the keypad sank in to reveal a fingerprint scanner.

  “Now what?” Carson asked with frustration.

  “Now, it’s Daniel’s turn,” Tripp said.

 
Daniel looked perplexed by what Tripp was referring to. After the light came on in his head, he unlatched the magnetic clip on the leather satchel he wore and dug into the pack. He produced a cylindrical device with a cradle for a phone on one side and a thin slit that ran most of the length, about an inch below that. When Carson asked what it was, Daniel explained it was a special printer for his phone.

  Tripp, knowing what to do next, rummaged through his fanny pack to retrieve materials for lifting a fingerprint with tape and placing it on special paper. He worked swiftly through the process and handed the lifted print to Daniel.

  Using his phone’s camera and a custom application, Daniel scanned the fingerprint, attached his phone to the miniature printer, and waited. Soon the fingerprint was duplicated on special paper coming from the cylinder printer. The image it printed produced the ridges and valleys of the human fingerprint. Carson watched, finding it magical.

  “The image is sort of a cross between a 2-D and 3-D image,” Daniel said to Carson. “When it dries in a few minutes, we’ll find out if we have a copy of your dad’s print that will fool the scanner.”

  “Cool,” said Carson. “Can you do that for my fingerprint too?”

  “Already have yours and Tripp’s,” Daniel said. His expression changed, and Carson knew he realized she had set him up.

  She punched him in the left arm. “You do, eh?”

  “I’ll destroy it, of course,” Daniel said as he rubbed his arm.

  “You better,” Carson said. “So why didn’t you use this method to try to get into Mark’s phone?”

  “Good question,” Daniel said. He turned and glared at Tripp.

  “I sort of cleaned Mark’s phone with hand sanitizer,” Tripp admitted. “People carry a lot of germs on their hands.”

  “I’d assume that tends to destroy fingerprints left behind?” Carson said.

  “Especially the way your brother cleans things,” Daniel said with a laugh.

  Tripp ignored their comments. After letting the fingerprint copy sit a moment longer, he retrieved it and carefully pressed it against the biometric reader. After a few tries, they finally heard the click of the lock.